Comparison Of Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, And John D. Rockefeller

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Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John D. Rockefeller are men of insight, innovation, and ingenuity. These are the men that started an age of advancement in steel, oil, and railroads within a time period of a few decades. Vanderbilt, a self-made man and cut-throat business man, owned the largest shipping empire in the world. He started with a single ferry which soon became a fleet of ships transporting goods and passengers throughout the country. He soon became known as the commodore. Just at the peak of his power and before the civil war he does what others couldn't even imagine. He invents the first transcontinental railroad. With this new advancement in transportation Vanderbilt sells all his ships and invests all his time and …show more content…
Vanderbilt gets his supply of oil from a young struggling entrepreneur in Cleveland, Ohio named John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller invests all he has into his first oil refinery. John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil is now the largest producer of refined kerosene in the country. Vanderbilt and Rockefeller’s agreement allows Vanderbilts railroads to expand and Rockefellers oil to be transported everywhere in the country. Rockefeller buys out almost all his competition, known as monopoly, and dominates 90% of the north american oil supply. Two rivals, Tom Scott and the commodore, make an unlikely alliance against Rockefeller. They pull all of Rockefeller's deals, but that does not stop him. Rockefeller finds another way to transport his oil and that is through pipelines underground. This advancement has made the railroads struggle to stay alive. Many railroad companies have gone bankrupt. The panic of 1873 triggered the first full blown national depression. At the peak of the depression the great commodore, the king of the railroads, Cornelius Vanderbilt dies at the age of 82. Rockefeller shuts down Pittsburgh refineries, which costed Standard Oil a fortune in lost

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